


Shallow Graves

by LokiCobalt (orphan_account)



Category: Zombieland (2009)
Genre: Apocalypses Cause A Lot of Problems, Apocalyptic Horror, BAMFs, Columbus has Gotten a Little Bit Fucked Up, Columbus is a Sassy Little Shit, Columbus-Centric, Creepy Columbus, Fight the Dead Fear the Living, Little Rock is a Little Shit, M/M, Pacific Playland, Post-Zombieland (2009), Reunited and It Feels So Good, Survival Horror, Team Zombieland, The Apocalypse Changes People, Twinkies Guns and Zombies make Tallahassee a Very Happy Man, Wichita Doesn't Understand Any of This Shit, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Hunters, Zombie Kill of the Week
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 21:53:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2708051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/LokiCobalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Pacific Playland, The team splits up and goes their separate ways. Five years later, Columbus is attempting to survive in a world where the dead are dangerous, but the living are even worse, and trying to reconnect with people after having spent the last half-decade on his own. He finds himself headed back to Pacific Playland for nostalgic purposes, and ends up running into the others, who had the same idea, and they decide to stay together. But five years can change a person, and there is now doubt that they have all changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shallow Graves

**-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-**

**136KRONOS**

**Shallow Graves**

**Chapter 01**

**-.-.-.-.-.-**

**-.-.-.-.-.-**

Columbus did not stay with the group after the Shit-storm cluster-fuck of Pacific Playland.

He had wanted to, at first, of course he did, but then That Night happened, and Columbus did not want to stay anymore. That Night, of course referring to the night exactly three days after Pacific Fuck-Land, when he lost his virginity to Wichita. He had spent so long fantasizing about women that he had expected fireworks, or something. He was woefully unprepared for the too rough bathroom stall three-minute fuck that ended with Wichita moaning another man’s name in his ear and leaving him before he had a chance to get off himself, confused, no longer hard, and actually rather hurt and irate with his pants around his ankles in a Gas’N’Gulp. He was not even mad at her, which was the sad part. He was angry because he had expected the whole marriage-white-picket-fence-and-apple-pie deal out of her, and had not thought to consider that all she would want was a replacement for some guy she know pre-apocalypse. He was livid with her for thinking she could use him, yes, but he was not mad that she had. And it was confusing to him.

So, the next night when they found an abandoned house they could crash at, Columbus left Wichita inside their private room, the one Tallahassee had so graciously offered unknowing of the bathroom event, in nothing but her underwear with a quick lie about wanting to check the perimeter one last time before settling in for the night. He grabbed one of the machine guns Tallahassee had left out, the machete they had found tucked under a couch cushion, and the large kitchen knife he had taken from his own college cafeteria but never used. He threw his hoodie and a couple cans of food and bottles of water into the tattered orange backpack that was in the house, and then he ran off into the night. He stole a car from a house three doors down, and he vanished.

That was five years ago.

Columbus would love to laugh it off and say that it was a breeze. That he survived easily because he was really a talented individual underneath his façade of sickness and wimpy nerdiness. He would love to say that they found a cure, that he is now living the good life in Beverly Hills, or Miami, and that his parents are alive and well. He would love to be able to convince himself of the lies, but unfortunately, they are exactly that. Lies.

He made his way to Columbus, Ohio first thing after running away from the group. It was where he had been wandering before he met them, and it was where he headed as soon as he knew they were not following him. He had not expected to find his parents alive, to be honest. He had always wanted to go for closer, more than anything, and finding his parents alive and well, all things considered, in their old house was a damn good experience. He stayed with them for a couple weeks, mostly half because his father had shot him in the chest and he needed to heal, mostly half because he just wanted to pretend everything was normal for once in his life, and the rest because Columbus really was a ghost town that made Pacific Playland look like a petting zoo. Eventually, however, he came to realize the quietness of his old home, combined with the overbearing shut-in paranoid personalities of his parents, was just too much for a guy like him to handle, and he did what he imagined the girls and Tallahassee would have done. He robbed his own parents blind, and stole away on an old pizza-delivery scooter with a couple full duffle bags strapped to the back. He left them food and weapons, of course, they were his parents after all, but he left them with only enough to survive a few more weeks, and made off with enough to last a month or so if he was prudent with his supplies.

After Columbus, he almost wanted to stop calling himself by that name, but then he found himself joining a camp with a group of old-school apocalypse-buffs and crazy preppers, and he certainly was not going to introduce himself by his birth-name when they were all going by monikers like Gypsy and Gunslinger and Doc. He was with them for six months, significantly longer than the month he had spent with Tallahassee, and the two weeks he had had with the girls. He learned to survive with these people. No, survival was one thing. Thriving was what these people did. Columbus learned to Thrive in the apocalypse. He also ended up having sex with two different people in the group, which is how he learned he was just as partial to men, as he was to women.

Anyways, after spending half a year with them, they decided to head to a supposed refugee camp, and the zombies killed them all viciously. It was a nightmare. The sheer hordes of zombies crawling about Washington DC, where the refugee camp was supposed to be, was staggering. Columbus barely escaped with his life, using them as distractions. That day was the day he realized he was never safe. He had gotten comfortable with these people, and that was a mistake. He had fallen in love with Bandit and Archer, and watching them scream as they were eaten alive before his eyes had been a nightmare. Getting close to them, to any of them, completely went against his Travel Light Rule, just as getting close to Tallahassee and the girls had.

This was when he decided he was better off alone. He gathered as many weapons and supplies as he could from the camper they had driven into the city with, and he walked out of there as though there were not hoards and hordes of zombies devouring his new friends only a few feet away. It was a miracle he escaped without being seen. He paid for his life with the lives of his second post apocalypse family. He spent the next four and a half years by himself, using the skills the group had taught him.

Now he is here, in the same damned house he lost his virginity to Wichita in, about to head back to Pacific Playland because he is a nostalgic bastard, and he is sort of wishing he had a way to contact the others, because he misses them like Tallahassee most likely misses Twinkies. Columbus likes to imagine he found himself a Cadillac, a shit-ton of guns, and holed himself up in a Hostess factory. The idea makes him smile. The house is almost exactly the same as it had been when he left, and he can almost envision Wichita sitting on the moth eaten blankets in her bright blue lace undies. Tallahassee would be passed out on the couch one room over, with a bottle of Jim Beam, and Little Rock curled up on the other side around his legs, a gun in her arms like a teddy bear. He smiles lightly at the image. There is a cowboy Stetson sitting on the floor next to the empty booze bottle, and there is a crumpled note written in purple crayon. He is sure the hat is Tallahassee’s, and he confirms it when he picks it up to find a dusty old picture of a little blonde kid and Tallahassee tucked into the hatband. Tallahassee probably left too quickly to think of it, for whatever reason, and it makes Columbus sad. Columbus picks up the note.

_Tell Columbus when he gets back that I am sorry._

It looks like Little Rock wrote it, although there is always the chance Wichita wrote it. Columbus writes like a child, with spidery thin sloppy letters that are hard to read, and his hand always drags over the words because he never holds his pencil correctly. The joys of being left-handed. Although, if he wants to get technical, he is ambidextrous, he just prefers to write left-handed and draw right-handed. He has always been like that. Still, it hardly matters now. They are living in an apocalypse, and Columbus hardly has time to draw or write, let alone argue semantics.

The words bring a sense of sadness and happiness all at the same time. He sort of wants to find the girls and Tallahassee and just hug them, and tell whoever wrote the note that he forgives them, and he would gladly accept the punch Tallahassee would bestow on him. He probably deserves at least 75% for running off without telling the man. Hell, he deserves it for not telling any of them, but he was young and stupid, and it has been so long since he saw them that he would gladly take the punishment.

Columbus spends the night in the house. He does not sleep all that much, just a few fitful hours. Mainly he drinks some whiskey he found a few days prior, and sharpens his knives. The night is long, full of moans, growls, and banging, but soon morning comes, and Columbus opens the door to realize it is snowing. Fluffy white falling from big puffy clouds, with no signs of slowing down. He curses colorfully, in a way his parents would have slapped him for, and he heads back inside. He digs through the closet for something, anything, to keep him warm. The only clothes he has in possession are the ones he is currently wearing. He does not even have a hoodie anymore. The closets are filled with clothing for a man clearly on the uglier side of over-weight, in various Hawaii tourist prints. Columbus sighs and decides he can just deal with it until he finds something in another house. He grabs Tallahassee’s hat from the floor and perches it atop his wild curls for no real reason, and then he grabs his weapons, slings the duffle bag over his shoulder, and then heads outside to brave the cold.

\--

Four days later, he is standing outside the gates of Pacific Playland, snow up to his ankles and falling slowly in tiny little crystal dots that seem to have no purpose but to make him colder. He is cold, stiff, and numb, wishing desperately he could start another fire, but the last fire he started burned the house he was in to the ground, and now he is currently covered in wet soot, with some gnarly burns up his left arm. He needs to change the cloth he is using as a bandage soon, but he is not sure if he can find anything to change it out with.

There are zombies meandering around, growling, drooling, and as ugly as ever. A clown-zombie catches sight of him and comes at him, and Columbus jams a knife into its skull with a violent shiver. He hates clowns, abhors them, loathes them, and fears them, even after the zombie-clown incident of Pacific Playland five years ago. Columbus whistles, and the few zombies nearby look over in interest. They come at him like a pack of rabid wolves, and Columbus takes them down with relative ease. He does not have to fire his gun, which is good considering the dead seem to be drawn to sound.

He hikes the duffle back onto his shoulder, and crosses into the empty amusement park. It is quiet and almost peaceful. The cold bites at his cheek, the snow muffles the stomping of his boots, and the few zombies he comes across are easy to take care of. He spots a man by one of the rollercoasters, tall and thin with short scruffy blonde hair and a snakeskin jacket Columbus knows Tallahassee would have loved. He is just sitting peacefully on the metal bars supporting the large rails, eyes closed with a sub-machine gun perched on his lap, and a katana across his back. As Columbus gets closer, he realizes something that has him stopping stalk still in the snow, mouth open like a gold fish, before a hesitant grin spreads across his lips.

“Tallahassee?” He questions, drawing attention to himself. The other man looks down, just as surprised as him.

“Spit-fuck?” He calls down as he starts climbing back down the rungs to Columbus’s level. “Is that you?”

Columbus grins. He had not known how much he missed that insulting nickname until this very moment. Once Tallahassee is back down on the ground, he pulls the other man into a hug. The man flails for a second, before awkwardly patting his back. Columbus pulls away. “Damn, it is good to see you Tallahassee.” He frowns. “Are you still going by Tallahassee, or do I call you something else?”

“Tallahassee is just fine, kid.” He grins back. “How about you? Still Columbus, or did you finally get there and see your folks.”

“Still Columbus, but I did find my parents.” Tallahassee raises a questioning eyebrow. “They were still alive last I saw them, but that was only a month or so after I left you guys. Probably aren’t too fond of me either, seeing as I stole their supplies and road off on the scooter our neighbor used to deliver pizza with back in the day. Figured it was only fair considering pa shot me a couple times with a nail gun.” Columbus rubs his chest as he remembers the pain of the nails buried in his chest.

Tallahassee laughs. “Good on you, Spit-fuck.” He looks at the hat on Columbus’s head. “Is that my hat?”

“It is.” He takes it off and hands it to the other. The look he gives Columbus makes his a bit worried he’s about to kiss him, but then Tallahassee is plopping the hat back onto his own head with a grin. Columbus opens his mouth to say something, anything to keep his mind from going down the narrow road and contemplating what would have happened if Tallahassee had kissed him like his eyes suggested he might, but then Tallahassee is laughing and pointing off into the distance. Columbus looks over to where he is motioning to, and his smile mirrors the other man’s wolfish grin. He cups his hands around his mouth and calls out to the two bickering women. “Yo, Little Rock! Wichita!”

Both girls look over, and he waves, lips spreading into a smile that is one part amused happiness, two parts predatory, and all teeth.

Tallahassee shoots him a wary look, a bit confused as he takes in the hyena-like grin on the younger man’s face, and resists the urge to shiver. That is not the kind of smile that entices someone to drop all guards. It is the kind of smile that makes women hide their children as their father’s start cleaning their shotguns. It looks foreign on Columbus’s face. Tallahassee remembers Columbus as a scrawny little peppy barely-legal bitch, shaking like a leaf as he tried to feign strength and bravery, and going on and on about his rules and phobias.

This is not that kid.

This is a man who has seen things no one should have to see, and done things that would make any man break. There is cold fury burning in his brown eyes, his hands always straying towards his knife. Even when he is not moving, the younger man’s hand taps a jittery beat against the hilt of the red-handled machete tucked into his belt. He is taller than Tallahassee remembers, thinner with more muscle, wearing hiking boots and blue jeans, an army pea coat and a plain grey shirt. His hair is curled, longer, darker, and messier. A few days stubble on his cheeks, as if he found a place to clean himself up before he got here. Tallahassee is not sure whether he likes what he sees, or if he misses the scrawny spit-fuck Columbus used to be.

Wichita and Little Rock finally reach them, and hugs are thrown around like candy. Little Rock has grown taller and lost her baby-esque softness, her hair shorn short like a pixie, messy spiky and light brown. Wichita, on the other hand, has longer hair, and her eyes are no longer lined in black liner. She looks nicer without her makeup. Both girls are dressed in jeans with Pacific Playland Tee-shirts under jackets. Little Rock is wearing a purple hoodie that looks suspiciously like the one Columbus lost, and Wichita is wearing the same black as she had last time they saw her. Tallahassee is the only one who has not changed much, just as buff and gruff as ever, with a little more stubble, and a lot more hair on his head. It is not long, not by a long shot, but the short-cropped mess is long in comparison to the near baldness they all remember. He is even dressed much the same. Jeans, cowboy boots, snake skin jacket, and his hat. The only difference is his shirt, which is plain black, and Columbus can see the long sleeves poking out from under the jacket.

“Columbus, Tallahassee.” Little Rock finally greets. She winks at Columbus. “Looking good there, wimp.” Columbus grins back at her.

“You’re not so bad yourself, girl.” Wichita sends him a look as if she thinks he is seriously contemplating going after her sister, and he almost laughs. He is not interested in any of them, no matter what his brain has to say otherwise about Tallahassee. Little Rock laughs.

Wichita smiles, but it looks forced. “I go by Krista now.” She tells them. “Kimberly and I haven’t been Little Rock or Wichita for five years.”

Little Rock winces as if she would have preferred that they did not know her name. “If it is all the same to you, I would really rather not say my name.” Columbus says.

Tallahassee nods. He motions to the rollercoaster. “How ‘bout we get to higher grounds, catch up.”

They all smile. “That is a wonderful idea.” Columbus allows.

And for a little bit, as the four perch atop the tallest rollercoaster in the park, everything is okay, and they have hope once more.


End file.
